Joe DiGenova, is a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, co-founder of the law firm of diGenova & Toensing and an informal legal adviser to President Trump and Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and Counsel to the President, are here to discuss the report by the Inspector General and his decision to do his own assessment of former FBI Director under President Barack Obama, James Comey and the DOJ’s decision not to prosecute.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, all right, a lot to cover today.
This is what we told you was coming.
You know, I know it is frustrating to many of you.
I guess maybe because some of you are now seeing it in black and white and you're saying, what?
You got to be kidding me.
Yeah, James Comey, absolutely, in my view, without a doubt, overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence that he did a number of things that are illegal.
You know, it's the level of hatred this man had and has for Donald Trump is beyond the pale.
We knew two and a half weeks ago when we first reported this that this was going to sort of be the preamble, maybe the appetizer.
Maybe I'm trying to give the best analogy and only a small sliver of the work of the inspector general.
It is, you read it and you care about truth and justice and the rule of law.
And what we had is a politically motivated super patriot who thinks that he knew better than the entire world.
And I'm sure if I had taken some classified memos home to my house and put them in my safe, that I would not have leaked such information as also, I doubt I'd be walking free today, especially if it was Andrew Weissman and Mueller's team of partisan Democrats coming after me.
And we've got some very serious questions that we're going to have to start asking very soon if we're going to remain this constitutional republic.
The words equal justice under the law mean something.
The words equal application of our laws means something.
Now, from the calls that I've been making all day to, and I'm just, don't be mad at the messenger.
This is exactly what I told you two and a half weeks ago was coming.
But I also said, this is just, this is the smallest part of what is really coming.
And this is the part that I was told from the get-go that conservatives are going to be frustrated with because I've got a laundry list I can read here of everything that James Comey did wrong, all his unethical behavior.
I mean, you want to talk about an operator?
Oh, this guy was an operator.
And Rudy Giuliani, I think, put it in a pretty good light, saying maybe he can beat the rap of leaking charges and having classified information in his house and not following the law and FBI policies.
But as he said, he doesn't see how the DOJ prosecutors will avoid indicting him now when the big Pfizer report comes out because James Comey is going to be all over it.
The leaking can be more unethical than illegal was his take on it, but the lying, you know, lying about the dossier saying that it was valid and accurate and true when it was not.
And we now know that it was unverifiable, but he testified that it was.
And we know that he was warned on multiple occasions that he shouldn't use it.
And it became the bulk of the information for the Pfizer applications.
Yeah, there's all sorts of crimes that will come up.
And I don't see how he dodges and ducks that.
I don't.
So I've got to, it's kind of like you got to take this.
And it's like, it's frustrating because we would not get away with this.
I do not believe.
I think if it was anyone associated with Trump, they would not get away with this.
You know, this, the level of arrogance, super patriot, it doesn't even begin to serve him justice.
You know, Comey is the one that owes the American people a sincere apology.
I mean, the list of things that they picked up just on the issues of his, these notes that he wrote to himself, it was clear he hated Trump.
And I believe at some point we're going to probably find out that there were a bunch of Russians hovering around the Clinton campaign and they got very different treatment from the FBI of Barack Obama.
You know, but the list is long.
I made a separate list on all of this.
You know, Comey didn't seek authorization from the FBI before giving memos to his attorneys.
Well, you're supposed to, or providing it to a friend who became his lawyer who leaked it to the New York Times, or that, you know, the conclusion that Comey's retention and handling and dissemination of certain memos violated Department of Justice policies and his FBI employment agreement,
which means that, yeah, there's a million reasons that are cited here why he should have been fired from the get-go and Trump did the country a service, or Comey telling the OIG that he did not notify anyone at the FBI that he was going to share these memos and didn't seek the authorization to do such prior to emailing these four memos to a bunch of different people,
or that Comey stated he didn't notify anyone in the FBI that he was going to share the contents of these memos with the media, didn't seek authorization for that either, or the report today concluding that after his removal, that Comey violated applicable policies, his employment agreement, failing to surrender the memos to the FBI.
That gets into the Espionage Act, the fact that he had classified information in a safe in his home, that would be a violation of law.
And it goes on from there that, you know, memo two had six words, four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the president, and that the FBI had determined were classified at the confidential level.
So he took those memos, which is illegal because he's supposed to hand them all back.
And despite the knowledge that, for example, in memo three, there's seven memos had classified information in it.
Comey did not appropriately mark the memo with the classification banners as he should have.
They even concluded that he violated the executive order 13526, the intelligence community department FBI policies on numerous points in the Horowitz report just on Comey.
This is the one, this is the one we've been talking about.
It's been out there now for two and a half weeks what we're going to get here.
And Comey's actions with respect to the memos.
You know, you can't walk away with anything except that this is a bad guy.
I hated when Joe DeGenova first said, and he's going to join us later, you know, dirty cop.
I cringe because of my family and my background and all the love and respect that I grew up with because I had so many family members in law enforcement.
But when it gets to the idea of where we are, look, you have a very arrogant guy in James Comey.
You have a super patriot that thinks he knows better.
You know, there are three separate issues involving Comey going forward from this.
This is separate and apart.
This is the smallest of the three other issues he's going to have to contend with.
One would be the rigged investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server.
The evidence is overwhelming, incontrovertible about the Espionage Act, 18 USC 793, related issues involving that.
Now we also have knowledge that the Chinese were hacking that server in the mom and pop bathroom closet in real time, real time.
You know, the purposeful change before you even interview people involved in a case from gross negligence to extreme carelessness.
That's a big deal.
You knew what you were doing when you did that or allowing the attorney general at the time to call what is a criminal investigation a matter.
That also has it.
You know, Comey now on Twitter, we got you.
Well, not so fast, Mr. Comey, because that's part one.
But we do know that the DOJ Inspector General, this is confirmed.
He has found that all four Carter Page FISA warrants were illegally obtained.
Now the question is, that means they committed a premeditated fraud on the FISA court.
The guy that signed three of them is Jim Comey.
Now, Jim can go out there on Twitter and brag all he wants.
I do think he barely, barely beat the rap here on the Espionage Act violation himself, my interpretation of the law and the leaking charges as well.
But he's far from out of the woods on the entire FISA abuse scandal.
You know, you look at what other people have been charged with.
This is what Giuliani said.
He says, I don't see, considering, you know, a U.S. attorney who first hired James Comey, Juliani said he doesn't see how the DOJ prosecutors can avoid indicting him with what is now coming, and that is premeditated fraud, perjury before the FISA court.
The leaking can be more unethical than illegal.
But lying about the dirty dossier, saying it was verified under oath, that's straight out of perjury, especially now that we know that he was warned on so many other occasions.
Greg Jarrett had a pretty interesting take on all this.
He'll also join us today.
You know, Comey's always insisted that the seven memos that he had composed of, you know, these conversations he allegedly had with President Trump and his own personal documents, but that would not be true because he's a hypocrite in that sense.
He knew pretty darn well that that was government information, and yet he took it home with him after he was fired.
And then he showed a lack of candor.
That also, you know, look at Papadopoulos, Cohn, Manafort, and who else?
They've all lying, but General Flynn, they didn't even think lied.
But Comey did exactly what Hillary Clinton was accused of doing because 18 USC 793, it is a crime to mishandle classified records by storing them in an unsecure location or conveying them to individuals who did not have a security clearance.
Page after page goes into violation after violation that former FBI Director Comey was involved in here.
And if you want to say intentional, gross negligence, it doesn't really matter because either way you look at it, you have a guy here who, you know, and this is what's disappointing to me, that you have prosecutors that the DOJ seem to have been give, he got the same get out of jail free card that he delivered to Hillary Clinton.
Because of course the guys he put on the case thought that she should win $100 million to zero.
And, you know, so he's out there taking a little bit of a victory lap saying he's been defamed.
It's just the beginning for him because now you're going to have to explain, okay, you were warned on this occasion.
You were warned on this occasion.
You were warned that it is a political document.
You were told that Hillary paid for it.
You were told that it is information from Russia.
You told the president in January of 2017, and that was mentioned in one of the memos, that the dossier was salacious but unverified.
But in October 2016, you signed it and on top of a FISA application, it says verified.
And that was the bulk of the application.
Then you're going to have a problem there.
I don't think he's out of the legal woods by any stretch here.
And I think what has happened is knowing what is coming next that we don't know fully, we have a pretty good idea when it comes to the Inspector General finding that the FISA applications to spy on Carter Page, which also meant a backdoor into the Trump campaign transition and then into the presidency, is a far bigger play, far easier to prosecute.
And the issue of lying then becomes relatively insignificant based on what we know is probably Comey's future.
And whatever involvement he might have had or not had as it relates to outsourcing of intelligence to circumvent U.S. laws or withholding exculpatory evidence, like in the case I believe Papadopoulos, that'll be revealed.
That then too becomes a big part of his future because that's going to be the Durham and the Barr report.
And then we get to the whole question of, well, how is it possible to have a counterintelligence investigation without it going through the president of the United States at the time, which of course would have been Barack Obama.
And at some point, he is going to have to answer questions himself.
You know, you look at one of the things that I think when we get to the heart and soul of all of this is that if in fact what Brassley Graham write and what everyone's told me that the bulk of information in the application was in fact the dirty dossier that's unverifiable,
well, then you got, let's see, a half a dozen statutes right off the top of my head perpetrating a fraud on a court, depriving American of their rights, 18 U.S.C. 242.
I think Rudy's right citing perjury, 18 USC 1621, 1623.
I think when we get to the FISA part of this, you'll get false statements, 18 USC at 1001.
And then you'll have several obstruction of justice and fraud statutes that probably would be applicable as well.
Now, with all that going on today, too, we have two people now saying the former interim AG, Matt Whitaker, predicting McCabe's indictment is imminent.
I'm sorry, imminent.
And then Comey's friend, this guy Ben Witts, expects McCabe to be indicted any day now.
And I think that's all true.
800-941-Sean toll free telephone number.
I'm going to explain all of the things that they've found that he did wrong in this when we come back straight ahead.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show.
All right.
I want to remind people here that this is not, this is not the full report.
This is limited to Very narrow in scope, the memos that Jim Comey had.
And when we get to the issues involving FISA abuse, premeditated fraud perpetrated on a court, that is where we get into the really big, strong,
heavy lift cases and law that in fact I think will be applicable, including deprivation of rights, 18 USC 242, perjury, 18 USC 1621, 23, false statements, 18 USC 1001.
And I am cautiously optimistic.
I'm withholding judgment at this point.
But the Inspector General, again, on this limited scope of the memos only, that's all this is today, saying, writing that the former director of the FBI, Comey, failed to live up to this responsibility by not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment.
And by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous precedence, an example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees and the many thousands more FBI employees, former FBI employees who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.
You know, and the IG did find here.
Well, more on the other side.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Ham, and I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
Okay, the Inspector General report.
Remember, maybe I'm too close to this because I've been telling you this little, this baby report, we told you two, three weeks ago that this was going to be the first one and that this was not going to be the big one, that this was going to be limited to the memos.
Maybe I had already absorbed the blow that this was not going to be the one that led to indictments.
I still, as I reread the whole thing today, and it took a while, I got it early this morning, I began to concern myself over this.
I want to explain my thought process on this because we predicted pinpoint accuracy what this limited Inspector General report that only related to Comey and the memos was going to be, and it turned out to be right.
We'll get back to that in a second.
First, we do get a quick check of the weather down in Florida, this Hurricane Dorian now expected to intensify to a Cat 4, posing a pretty growing danger to the southeastern U.S., especially Florida.
At least it's current track.
Joe Bastardi is with us, chief meteorologist of the Sean Hannity Show.
Get all of his great work at Weatherbell.com.
And it looks like it's headed right towards the middle of Florida.
If it's going to be a direct hit, are you thinking it lands as a Cat 4?
Well, I think it's going to become a Cat 4.
But Sean, I also think, and we've been thinking it was going to try to come in further south, at least get very close to West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and there.
I don't think Miami is going to be directly impacted.
What happened if you remember Joaquin and Irma?
Joaquin turned west-southwest for a while before it went out.
Joe, Joe, there's not a person, there's not one person in this audience that remembers hurricanes like you do.
Okay, well, I just want to set the stage because what may happen here is: A, it's slowing, it's going to slow down as it comes toward the Bahamas, and B, turn west-southwest through the northern Bahamas, then start its way up.
So that will delay the onslaught of the worst weather in Florida to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
And the problem is that this is going to crawl, whether it's onshore or offshore, it's just going to drift north-northwest the middle of next week.
And the potential is when do you expect landfall and where do you expect it?
And how powerful a storm do you expect?
Let me say, I expect hurricane conditions on the Florida coast from Monday night, starting around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, and then working its way up the coast Tuesday, Wednesday, and then next Thursday, a week from today, it may be going into the southeast part of the United States.
The thing we have here, folks, is when a storm, when a storm is just offshore, like Matthew was a few years ago, it can't hit Florida from the south-southeast.
It has to hit under the bend near West Palm Beach.
If you look at the map, the coast changes directly, the direction.
So we're concerned that's going to happen.
Then it hugs the coast.
It's going to be a major news story next week, first for the Bahamas.
All right.
We thank God this dodged Puerto Rico.
I don't think this is missing the Bahamas.
There'll be a cat three or four by that time.
And then Florida, later on, what's the strength of this hitting?
You know, what is the hurricane strength when it makes landfall in Florida?
Well, if it makes landfall, it'll probably be a strong three or category four.
The ones that approach the coast slowly, Sean, sometimes they weaken as they come.
Can you expect this to be maybe Monday night or early Tuesday?
Monday night or Tuesday is when I think it's going to be delayed a little bit.
The other thing, it's not as wide as Irma.
It's more a fist of fury, a smaller storm, but it's going to really pack a punch.
All right.
Thank you so much, Joe Bastardi, Weatherbell.com.
We'll continue to follow it.
Listen, my advice is always the same: listen to what the experts tell you.
You have a couple of days now to decide.
Watch closely.
Make sure you put your safety, your family safeties first.
All right.
So we have been telling you that there are going to be a series of reports coming out.
And before we got this report today, this is the Horowitz report.
This is limited to Comey and to the memos that he wrote, which were government property.
Now, this is a devastating report.
You know, the inspector general is saying that the former director failed to live up to his responsibilities.
And he did not safeguard even classified but sensitive information obtained during the course of his employment with the FBI.
And he used it to create public pressure, meaning political pressure, for official action.
And then he said that he set a horrible example, a dangerous example, the exact words for every current FBI employee, all 35,000 of them, and many thousands more, former FBI employees who similarly have access or knowledge to these non-public information.
So here we have these memos written in the course of scope of his employment, and he spoke with the president in his capacity as the director of the FBI.
And Greg Jarrett had a good point about this.
And sure enough, the FBI found that Comey's characterization of the memos as being personal records finds no support in law, wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, policies defining federal record keeping, and the terms of the employment, his FBI employment agreements.
And nevertheless, Comey kept copies of these documents at his home, an unsecured, unauthorized location.
He didn't return the records when he got fired, which he should have done upon his termination as required.
And the IG made a criminal referral to prosecutors at the Department of Justice.
And Comey is fortunate, frankly, that he's not charged with several violations of the federal statute, 18 USC 641.
And that would make it a crime to steal or knowingly convert a government record with the intent to convert it to his use or convey it to another without authority.
This, of course, giving it to his lawyers.
He didn't ask permission.
He didn't follow protocol.
And that could be, yes, a violation of law, the federal statute I just cited.
And as the IG pointed out, not a single member of Comey's staff agreed with his interpretation that the memos were personal.
And the FBI relied on them as official records and kept them at their headquarters in a secure location where they belong.
And of course, he wasn't honest.
Okay.
He lied.
A lack of candor means you lied.
And that's another problem Comey has on numerous occasions and all of this.
And the memo that he gave to his friend, who he also hired as an attorney with instructions, his name is Daniel Richmond, that it be leaked to a member in the media of the New York Times.
Well, that's a violation of FBI rules.
And as much as the content involves sensitive information about an ongoing investigation, and it was incumbent on the former director to protect it, former director Comey failed to live up to his responsibility.
Those are the exact words in the report.
And, you know, but again, Comey's contorted mind, he's the victim.
You know, in one memo, Comey recounted how he promised the president, I don't do sneaky things.
I don't leak.
I don't do weasly moves.
Okay, well, he does.
And his scheme to leak the sensitive government information and records to trigger the appointment of a special counsel that he did all of this.
This is what the attorney general, the inspector general is saying, is so dangerous.
Not safeguarding that sensitive information is dangerous.
Creating public pressure for official action is dangerous because he's deciding that.
And the list, I literally have six straight pages of every instance where they found that he didn't follow the law, regulations, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, let me just get you to stand back with me because we've been doing this now for two and a half years.
We told you on this program on Hannity that this memo was coming.
We told you that there would not be, there would be criminal referrals.
There are.
There are a number of them.
And that there will be a declination in terms of the Attorney General deciding not to move forward with all of this.
Many of you, in spite of us telling you that that was going to be the result, are angry today.
I share your anger, but I withhold judgment.
And what do you mean, Hannity?
We have the major report on FISA abuse coming.
That to me is going to be the determining memo.
Well, and that may not even be the worst one because we'll have another one on leaking, which is a problem.
We have two sources now suggesting this guy, Ben Witts, who's a friend of McCabe, or I'm sorry, a friend of Comey, expects McCabe to be indicted any day now.
You should expect charges against McCabe to be forthcoming any day.
Okay, we'll see if that's true.
Also, the former Attorney General, Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, told Fox News that he thinks that McCabe's indictment is imminent.
And he said, I've not seen a DAG appeal ever be successful.
And he said, I've seen them many times again and again with sophisticated defense lawyers, but this is usually when someone's imminently going to be charged and they try to get to the Deputy Attorney General and plead their case.
All right, I have no doubt that's all true.
So there's going to be a lot happening here.
But this is what I'm looking for.
This is, and my sources, again, we've told you two weeks ago this is happening.
This is the limited inspector general report.
It is isolated in a very specific area to the Comey memos that he had.
And it goes into great detail.
When you read it, you can see it's a problem.
What I expect when we get the major report from the Inspector General, that would be Horowitz on FISA abuse.
Remember, we're going to get four of them.
This is the first.
This was the least significant, if you will, in terms of importance or magnitude of the issues, criminality that could be involved.
This was always that.
And we knew for two and a half weeks that there was going to be no legal criminal action taken as a result of this.
But what comes next is going to tell it all.
And what's coming next is this is the FISA abuse premeditated fraud on a FISA court.
Now, the Justice Department regulations embrace the same rule requirements.
And, you know, let me play Rod Rosenstein here for a minute.
As a result of, you know, his interpretation, if you're a career law enforcement officer and you're filling out a FISA application, you're swearing to the best of your ability, you verified it.
Now, remember, the dossier is the bulk of information in the FISA applications.
It's unverifiable.
Remember that as you hear this.
The way we operate in the Department of Justice, if we can accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses.
We need to prepare to prove our case in court.
And we have to affix our signature to the charging document.
That's something that not everybody appreciates.
There's a lot of talk about FISA applications.
And many people that I see talking about it seem not to recognize what a FISA application.
A FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant.
In order to get a FISA search warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement officer who swears that the information in the affidavit is true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.
And that's the way we operate.
And if it's wrong, sometimes it is, if you find out there's anything incorrect in there, that person is going to face consequences.
That person is going to face consequences.
All right.
So Comey signs a series of them.
He signed the three FISA applications, the original application in October 2016, and then told Donald Trump, and that came out in this memo investigation.
Just the opposite.
It was salacious.
The dossier, the bulk of information to obtain the warrant.
Remember, McCabe said no dossier, no FISA warrant, wouldn't happen.
So the reason that I am more optimistic is we knew this would be limited in scope.
We knew this would be limited only to the Comey memos.
Do I see examples of wrongdoing?
Yes.
Do I see a clear violation of the law?
I believe it's very clear, 18 U.S.C. 641.
I do believe that.
You can't knowingly steal or convert a government record the way James Comey did and convey it to another without the authority.
Did all of that and lack of candor tells me that well, he lied.
and like Manafort and like, let's see, they're going after Roger Stone on this.
They're going after, they went after Papadopoulos, Cohn, General Flynn on this.
I would like to know that we have equal application of our laws.
But when we get to this FISA part of Horowitz's work, which is now being in the final stages of vetting to give to us, this is going to be what tells us whether or not we have equal justice under the law.
This is where I will be making, there will be no more withholding judgment from me because it is a felony to conceal relevant information.
It's a felony and deceive a FISA court.
It is, there are so many statutes that can be applicable here.
You know, it's a crime if you want to perpetrate a fraud on a court.
That would be you're doing so for the deprivation of rights.
That's actually a felony section, 18 USC 242.
That would include, as Rudy Giuliani said, perjury 18 USC 162123.
That's knowingly, again, misleading.
This is premeditated fraud on a court.
False statements, that would be 18 USC 1001.
Then you'd have to look at all the obstruction of justice statutes that similarly would be applicable.
All of the fraud statutes that would be applicable also.
Who signed off on these?
Well, we know it was Comey, McCabe, Yates, Dante, Dana Bonte, and Rod Rosenstein on the last one.
You know, so all of this, this is the baby report.
This is only limited to the memos.
Disappointing.
I told you it was going to be exactly like this two and a half weeks ago.
And now I'm telling you that I expect much different results when the full FISA Inspector General report gets out.
We'll have more.
We have John Solomon, Greg Jarrett, Joe DeGenova, Jay Seculo, all coming up.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hammond and I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
All right, glad you're with us.
Hour two, Sean Hannity Show.
We'll get Solomon and Greg Jarrett's take on this.
Look, this is the baby.
I got to explain things better.
I must not be communicating.
Well, because we told you that this baby limited IG report on the memos was coming out and told you, yeah, there are criminal referrals, but the AG decided not to pursue them.
This is the smallest.
This is one small, tiny, isolated piece that is part of a broader investigation, which is the big report, which will be on FISA abuse, which is coming.
Now, I mean, with all of that said, it is about as damning as it can be.
Lindsey Graham said it was stunning and an unprecedented rebuke of a former FBI director.
Said the Inspector General's report is stunning, unprecedented rebuke of the director of the FBI.
He said, this is the first of what I expect will be several more ugly and damning rebukes of senior DOJ and Trump DOJ and FBI officials regarding their actions and their biases towards the Trump campaign and the Trump presidency in 2016 and beyond.
And he's right.
And Graham thanked the Inspector General for this is a very narrow, limited part of what is being investigated.
Now, did they find that the former FBI director failed to live up to his responsibilities?
Yeah, those words are in this report.
Did they find that he didn't safeguard sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment?
Yeah, they found that out too.
Did they believe that he was using this information to create public pressure for official action?
Meaning using that information to advance a political agenda.
That's pretty much what they're saying without saying it.
And that he set a, quote, dangerous example.
This is the FBI director set a dangerous example for over 35,000 current FBI employees and many thousands more former FBI employees who have similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.
And then they went through all of this.
Now, I agree with Greg Jarrett's take on this, and he'll tell us more, and that's 18 USC 641 about the, you know, that's a federal statute that makes it a crime to steal or knowingly convert a government record with the intent to convert its use or convey it to another without authority.
And I can go through chapter and verse of everything they've said.
This is the first of what I told you weeks ago.
Well, now months ago, they're going to be a series of reports.
This was the most narrow and limited in scope of all of them.
This is not the FISA abuse issue.
Because when we get to the FISA abuse, this is where I agree with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
And that is that he signed three FISA applications.
We now know the Inspector General found that all four of those FISA applications were obtained illegally.
Now, let's assume that my sources are right on that part.
So far, we've not been wrong.
I told you the exact result of this limited report that would come out first.
Next is going to be the big report on FISA abuse.
Well, at that point, then you bring in issues like, oh, let's see, perpetrating a fraud on a court, deprivation of rights, 18 USC 242, perjury, 18 USC 1621-23, false statements, 18 U.S.C. 1001, obstruction of justice statutes, fraud statutes would probably be applicable as well.
Joe DeGenova is with us.
Joe DeGenova has been, I'll never forget the day he actually said dirty cop on the air to me.
And I'm like, oh, wow, that hurt because I have so many people I love and respect in law enforcement.
But as I look at every violation that is chronicled here, I can't disagree with that characterization.
Also, Jay Seculo, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice Counsel to the president.
Welcome both of you.
Joe, Start with you.
What is your take on this memo?
This is the beginning of a cascading series of consequences for the FBI.
Make no mistake about it.
What Comey has done has completely destroyed the faith of the American people in the FBI.
It's going to take years to restore it because what's coming down the pike after this is much, much worse.
What they are going to find is that under President Obama and with President Obama's knowledge and authorization, a counterintelligence operation was conducted against an incoming President of the United States and then a sitting President of the United States by John Brennan, James Comey, and other people, including people in the Department of Defense.
This is very, very important for people to understand.
On January the 5th, 2017, when President Obama met with Clapper, Comey, Yates, Brennan, Susan Rice, they discussed in detail the pending counterintelligence investigation against Donald Trump.
And the President of the United States, Barack Obama, authorized them to lie to Donald Trump during the transition and after he became president to protect that investigation.
Are you confident all of that is going to be revealed?
Oh, I can tell you right now that the reason John Durham has been so quiet and nobody knows what he's going to do is because of the following.
When is he going to interview Barack Obama?
I raised this very question last night.
Let me bring in Jay Seculo.
Jay, as devastating as this report was, it is everything that I said it would be, narrowed, very limited in scope, limited to the memos and Comey only.
And we knew while there were criminal referrals that they wouldn't be made in this case.
I expect a very different result when the full report on FISA abuse comes out.
That did not come out today.
I think you're absolutely correct, but I think it's also important to reiterate what Joe said and that this is the beginning of the cascade.
But you got to realize what has happened here.
I mean, the Inspector General, an independent agency within the DOJ, appointed this particular case, Michael Harvey was appointed by President Obama, concluded that James Comey's retention handling dissemination of these memos violated the Department of Justice policies, the FBI's policies, and his FBI employment agreement.
Add to it his serial aspect of this.
In other words, he has consistently engaged in this kind of behavior.
I think it points to where this is going.
This was an FBI director who should have been fired.
He was fired.
Not only did the president have the constitutional right to fire him, he's got the evidence of it just with his own actions.
So I think what you have here is the beginning.
Durham's investigation is much more extensive.
This was the narrowest slice of the narrowest piece of this pie, so to speak.
I think this is the only thing.
I think it's the prelude.
Now, I've been telling this audience, we look with pinpoint accuracy, I told you exactly what this report would do.
I know some of you were just absorbing it today, but I've been telling you exactly what was in this report and what it would show.
It was narrow in scope, limited to the memos, and there would be referrals, but no prosecution at this time.
Now, if we do believe, as I believe, everything Joe is saying and Jay is saying, Then the big question is, well, will the FISA report by the Inspector General be big, but even the Durham report on other things, the counterintelligence aspect of this, what did Barack Obama know?
When did he know it, be the really big, big issue?
Let me ask you both.
I don't see any.
I have not seen a grand jury convene.
That concerns me, especially before we get the FISA abuse Inspector General report.
Joe.
I haven't seen any evidence of grand jury, but I'm not worried about that, and I'll tell you why.
What John Durham is doing and what Bill Barr is doing, this is really quite amazing.
They are circling through evidence in concentric circles around the former president of the United States.
The entire case is now one of developing all the testimony from all the interested parties who will be interviewed.
There is no doubt that Clapper and Comey and Brennan, all these people will be interviewed by Durham because the ultimate goal is to find out by what authority did President Obama authorize a counterintelligence investigation against an elected but not yet seated president of the United States.
Let me stop you here.
You cannot, as Andy McCarthy's new book points out, have a counterintelligence investigation without the president signing off on it.
The only person that could authorize such would be the president of the United States, which would be Barack Obama.
Correct.
He did.
And he did.
And the January 5th meeting, followed by the January, people have not read it.
You've got to read Susan Rice's January 20th email for the record.
She states categorically that the president of the United States instructed them to do everything by the book.
And if that meant that they had to keep information from the incoming president and his cabinet about intelligence matters, he was authorizing them to do so.
That is sedition.
Jay?
No, I think Joe's 100% correct here.
I mean, you've got to look at where this came from.
You know, we focus on Clapper and Brennan as we should.
These were high-ranking officials.
Who did they report to?
They reported to the President of the United States.
So I think, look, they know where they're pretty quiet these days, Sean.
I'm hearing a lot out of them.
And James Comey, interesting in his comments today, are very carefully worded because his lawyers know he's not out of jeopardy.
So what do they do in a situation like that?
Well, you word your statements very carefully because everybody knows that James Comey, I think it's pretty clear.
Look at these, just look at these conclusions here.
Comey did not seek authorization from the FBI before providing his memos to his attorneys.
Comey instructed one of his attorneys to share the contents of this memo number four.
These are conversations with the president of the United States, by the way.
Comey did not seek FBI authorization before providing the contents of this.
So yes, he, you know what?
James Comey is bragging about narrowly escaping an indictment.
This is the guy that wrote, you know, higher loyalty.
But do you believe?
Well, then let me ask you if we expect before we get to the Durham report, which I believe gets to the heart of the counterintelligence question that you're both bringing up, which, yeah, I think it ultimately ends up in the Oval Office with Barack Obama, Joe Biden.
I want to know their involvement.
What did they know?
When do they know it?
Why did they authorize it?
So, and I would bet that probably the dirty dossier played a part in that as well.
But the question now is, the next big report is going to be on FISA abuse.
Now we know that it is an unverifiable document that was used, the Clinton dossier, the Russian dossier that she paid for, that it was an unverifiable document.
We know that even its author doesn't stand behind it.
We know that when the FBI finally tried to verify it, 90 plus percent, they said is not true.
Now the question is, Joe, I'll start with you first.
Is that at that point, does James Comey get read his rights?
I don't know, but I will tell you this.
It isn't even a close call anymore.
They're already crossed that Rubicon.
The four FISA warrants were illegally obtained.
They were based on fraudulent information given to the FISA court, which leads to.
Now, by the way, we know for a fact it's been reported, the inspector general, I've had numerous sources tell me the inspector general found that all four FISA applications were illegally obtained.
That is correct.
Well, anyone that signed off on it, then they broke the law.
Theoretically, that is correct.
And the issue becomes, and here's what I want to know.
I want to know when that is done and that is made public, that report, what is Chief Judge Collier of the FISA court going to do?
And more important than that, what is the Chief Justice of the United States going to do who runs the FISA court?
You know, Joe, I thought of that exact same thing, too.
If you put, you know, you know, I've been in courtrooms for many, many decades doing cases, both for the government and his private lawyers.
And it was, I've always thought, I've thought about that too.
What about the FISA court judges who were misled intentionally here by government officials?
I mean, whoa, I can't even imagine what they're thinking right now.
Well, people who haven't read the documents that are now publicly available don't know that Judge Collier in 2017, when she stopped all access to NSA databases by FBI contractors,
said that the DOJ under John Carlin and Loretta Lynch for more than four years had been submitting false statements to the court and had been illegally accessing electronic information about Americans.
We are way, way beyond any conjecture about what happened here.
The truth is the Obama, FBI, and Justice Department authorized illegal activity by contractors.
They briefed the President of the United States, Barack Obama, on it.
He knew about every bit of it and he authorized it.
And when Susan Rice wrote that memo on January 20th, 2017, execution day for Donald Trump, when she wrote that memo, she wasn't covering her ass.
That was a justification memo.
I got to write.
Will people be charged and found guilty?
Prediction.
The answer is, I don't know if anybody's ever going to be found guilty of anything in the District of Columbia with a jury pool of radicals.
Will there be charges?
They should be charged.
They should be charged.
All right.
We'll leave it there.
Thank you both.
Quick break, right back.
John Solomon, Greg Jarrett, next.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Ham.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
We got a lot to get to.
We got Greg Jarrett.
Look, I know this is a lot to absorb.
The fact that you have this devastating beatdown by the Inspector General, and this is the, you know, this is the limited baby report, just limited in scope to the leaked memos of Comey.
And I am just telling you that I do not see how he avoids legal jeopardy on FISA abuse because we already know that they have determined that the FISA warrants were illegally obtained.
And it doesn't matter.
Your job is to verify it, as we played earlier.
Rod Rosenstein taught us that.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
So were all of your memos that you recorded on classified or other documents, memos that might be yours as a private citizen?
I'm sorry, I'm not following the question.
Well, I think you said you'd use classified, classified, oh yeah, not the classified documents, unclassified.
I don't have any of them anymore.
I gave them to the special counsel.
But yeah, my view was that the content of those unclassified memorialization, those conversations was my recollection recorded.
Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says that there are seven memos.
He says four of them are classified.
Is that right?
I don't know because I don't have the memos.
I don't know exactly how many there are.
Some may be memos, some maybe emails.
There's somewhere between five and ten.
It may be seven.
It may be eight.
I don't remember.
And I think some of them, I know when I created some of them, they were classified.
President's tweeted innumerable times calling you a leaker.
What's your response to President Trump?
Look, it's true.
I mean, I'm the one who testified about it.
That's how people know about it.
I gave that unclassified memo to my friend and asked him to give it to a reporter.
That is entirely appropriate.
So if you're releasing memos, which may later on be classified, which happened to Hillary Clinton as well, aren't you taking a risk that you think you know, oh, this is not going to be classified, but it turns out one of them was retroactive?
I don't think if it is a risk, you're making an educated judgment based on your training and your experience as to what's classified and what's not.
But you did leak, you did leak memos.
I mean, is it okay for somebody at the FBI to leak something, an internal document, even if it's not classified?
Isn't that leaking?
Well, there's a whole lot wrong with your question, Anderson.
First, I didn't leak memos.
Yeah, you kind of leaked memos as they are referred to in the Office of the Inspector General report just on Comey.
Look, this is what we told you was coming with the result predetermined in spite of the numerous criminal referrals on this part of it, which will be nothing as devastating.
Jim's Comey's got so many other bigger issues.
My interpretation of the decision-making in this case, because there's definite violations of law, and we'll check in with our legal team in a minute, is that if you take, if you go to a FISA court judge and you say to that judge, this is verified, accurate, and true to the best of your ability, and you sign off on that warrant to spy on an associate of a presidential candidate, which gives you a backdoor into that campaign, later the transition, and then later the presidency, and you do it three times,
that then, and the bulk of information we now know is unverifiable.
When the FBI finally ever got around to checking it out, what do we find that none of it's true?
And then all these meetings that Jim Comey, Mr. Superpatriot, took about his meetings with Donald Trump and his interactions with Trump.
I mean, it seems in many ways he has hurt himself.
But here to break down the news side of it, what's coming next, John Solomon, investigative reporter, executive vice president and columnist for The Hill, Greg Jarrett, also with us.
All right, let me start first on the legal side of this, and then we'll get to John as to, well, maybe we'll start with John.
Why don't we start with, we're going to have four reports.
This is one we've known about now for three weeks and with perfect reporting accuracy on this.
Exactly what we had been telling people would be in this report is there.
But there are multiple times criminal referrals are made here and the determination is not to move forward.
And that's what got some people upset.
Yeah, listen, people are going to look at this and think that James Comey got a break and he did.
But I think when you look at it from the prosecutor's side, it takes you a little time in the report to understand because you got memo two has this and then memo three has that and it takes you about 10 minutes of the report to line up all the memos and figure out which ones were classified which weren't.
That's very hard to sell to a jury, right?
And I think the Justice Department's decision here was calculated.
This is a confusing case on the margins.
And if we lost it, it would send the wrong message that James Comey was vindicated.
When we don't want James Comey vindicated, what he did was wrong.
He violated department policy.
He stole FBI documents.
He gave classified documents to his lawyers.
This is a man that should not have been leading the department.
And this report validates that.
It vindicates the decision by the Justice Department and President Trump to fire this man.
He couldn't follow his own rules.
Well, and the interesting thing, too, is when he describes, and as an appendix, you get the whole memo he wrote after the Trump Tower meeting where he said that the dossier is salacious but unverified.
That's not what he testified to when he signed it three times.
And even prior to that meeting with the president-elect at the time, Donald Trump.
Greg, what do you see from a legal side?
Well, I think James Comey was very fortunate.
He was not charged with several violations of 18 USC 641.
That makes it a crime to steal or knowingly convert a government record with intent to convert it to your own use or convey it to somebody else.
That's clearly what the Inspector General found.
So that's 18 USC 641.
That's right.
He stole government documents, and then he gave them to unauthorized individuals, including his friend and attorney Daniel Richmond and two other lawyers.
All right.
And then that information is leaked to the media.
So, you know, that falls squarely under 641 of the criminal code.
He's very lucky he wasn't charged with that.
beyond that, as John pointed out, mishandling classified documents, 18 USC 793.
He had at least one classified memo, memo number two, that he kept in his home in an unauthorized location.
That's exactly what Hillary Clinton did with classified documents stored on her home server.
He also gave at least one memo to his lawyers.
These are not people who are cleared for classified information.
So he could have been charged with that as well.
It's disappointing that prosecutors at the DOJ seem to have given Comey the same get out of jail free card that Comey delivered to Clinton, but he's not out of the woods yet.
I agree with you.
The graviman of the Inspector General investigation is yet to be revealed.
This next report, forthcoming, is expected to focus on Comey and others who deceived the FISA court in order to spy on the Trump campaign.
And if there's any justice in our system of justice, those who broke the law will be held accountable.
The Department of Justice's rationale, Greg, is that, yeah, you're right.
The DOJ, they do prosecute crimes, but the standard is high beyond a reasonable doubt.
And if the bigger fish to fry as it relates to Comey's conduct comes out in either a rigged investigation into Hillary, which I believe should be gotten back into.
That's not one of the buckets or anticipated reports that we're going to get.
But then the one on FISA is real.
And that is to use unverified, salacious information put together by an opposition party candidate that we now find out is unverifiable.
And when the FBI finally got to it, they said, no, none of this is true.
And he had been warned about such.
That makes it all premeditated abuse, lying to a court, to a judge to deny one person Carter Page's civil liberties, constitutional rights, and also a backdoor to spy on all things Trump campaign transition and presidency.
This is the stronger case.
The Fisk was deceived by Comey and others in six ways.
They weren't told the Clinton campaign had paid for the information in their warrant application.
They weren't told that the FBI source Steele had lied.
They weren't told that Steele had a known bias against Trump.
They weren't told that the FBI's evidence was unverified.
And they weren't told about exculpatory evidence suggesting the innocence of Page.
They weren't even told that the wife of a senior DOJ official cultivated some of this information used by the FBI.
So these deceptions were hidden from the court.
That's a fraud on the court.
That is a crime.
I would expect criminal referrals from Horowitz.
Okay, I think we're going to have more criminal referrals.
But in this particular case, I think Rudy Giuliani summed it up pretty well, John.
We weren't expecting the Attorney General to act on this particular case because of Comey's involvement in all these other issues, you know, and especially with the FISA report due in days or weeks whenever they finish.
What Rudy Giuliani said, and he gave a pretty clear warning to James Comey that he might have beaten the rap here on the leaking charges, but he's far from being out of the woods on the FISA abuse scandal.
And Giuliani said he doesn't see how DOJ prosecutors can avoid indicting him now for committing perjury before the FISA court.
And he said the leaking can be more unethical than illegal, but lying about the steele dossier and saying it was validated under oath, that's straight out of perjury.
And he said, I put people in jail for much less than that.
He said, Comey lied, straight out lied.
Well, that would be premeditated lying, premeditated fraud.
It's not like he wasn't warned.
He has no ability to go back and say, well, we vetted this stuff and this is why we vetted it.
I guess the only thing he could say is, well, Steele gave us valid information in the past, so we just accepted it as true.
That wouldn't hit the standard, though, would it?
It would not.
And remember, the most important thing they put in that first and all four of the FISA warrants was the claim that they had validated that Carter Page had met with these two Igors, Igor Dyvetsky and I forget the other Igor's name, but there were two senior people very close to Putin.
We know that never happened.
Mueller never found evidence of it.
The FBI never corroborated based on the spreadsheet and other information that we've learned about.
And yet the FBI represented to a court not once, not twice, not three times, but four times that that was valid information to support the continuance of surveillance on Carter Page.
Those are the sort of issues that you're going to see laid bare and painfully so in the IG report that comes out.
I think some of the things that we first started discussing this and you began to report that this was coming out and this was going to be separate and apart, we also had the foregone conclusion is there were criminal referrals, but they weren't going to be followed up on.
Now, there is the possibility now when the full FISA abuse report comes out, James Comey is going to be all over this.
Do either of you see any way that he would not face some type of charge or grand jury at least to see if they're going to indict him for his behavior, which is, again, premeditated fraud on a court or perjury, whatever you want to call it.
I think it's impossible for Comey in particular to avoid a criminal referral and eventual prosecution.
He signed off on not one, but three of the FISA warrants from October of 2016 through April of 2017.
By his own admission, the information was unverified, and yet he signed a document three times that said the information is verified.
All right, got to take a quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll have more with John Solomon, Greg Jarrett, Jonathan Gillum, Danielle McLaughlin at the top of the next hour.
As we continue, the Inspector General, this is the first and what will be a series of devastating reports as it relates to FISA abuse and much, much more.
800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
And as we continue with John Solomon, investigative reporter, executive vice president for The Hill, and also author of the number one best-selling book, The Russia Hoax, Greg Jarrett.
As we continue our coverage of part one, this is now going to be part of a series.
This was the one we knew about, though.
Not a lot of surprises today, except when you read it, the depth of lying.
And you know, Rod Rosenstein actually gave, this was back in May of last year.
He gave an interesting comment about signing off on a FISA warrant.
Let's go back and listen to what Rod Rosenstein had to say about it.
The way we operate in the Department of Justice, if we're going to accuse somebody of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence and credible witnesses.
We need to prepare to prove our case in court.
And we have to affix our signature to the charging document.
That's something that not everybody appreciates.
Now, there's a lot of talk about FISA applications, and many people that I see talking about it seem not to recognize what a FISA application is.
A FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant.
In order to get a FISA search warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement officer who swears that the information in the affidavit is true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.
And that's the way we operate.
And if it's wrong, sometimes it is.
If you find out there's anything incorrect in there, that person is going to face consequences.
Okay, so those would be consequences.
But John, your reporting showed that there were numerous people on numerous occasions that warned him that this cannot be verified, that it was political in nature, all things that were hidden from the FISA court judges that were here in this case.
It's clear James Comey knew the dossier wasn't verified.
He testified so within days of him being fired, and that was nine months into the investigation and three FISA warrants into the investigation.
I don't know how he's going to explain it.
I think we ought to wait and see what the FBI or the IG found.
I understand they have located some email chains that suggest that there was a pretty broad discussion of concern about what they were about to do in this FISA warrant.
I think if we can get to see that, that's always been in our bucket of things that should be released as FBI email chains.
We'll know how much foreknowledge James Comey had in the discussion about what was right and wrong about Steele and the dossier and the way they were crafting this FISA in October of 2016.
I think that's going to be the most critical evidence that will determine whether there's a criminal referral and prosecution.
Can they find written evidence or testimony where someone says, yeah, we knew Steele was bad and we were using it anyways.
If they get to that level, and I'm told there's some of that evidence, then there's a possibility that a grand jury will be convened.
As of right now, my reporting indicates there's no grand jury activity going on.
No defense lawyers report getting anything that I can reach.
And it looks like so far we're in that administrative review.
If a grand jury starts, then you know criminal charges may be forthcoming.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz writes, former Director Comey failed to live up to his responsibility by not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment and by using it to create public pressure for official action.
This is getting more interesting by the day.
We'll have full coverage of all of this tonight on Hannity on the Fox News channel.
We'll have Jonathan and Danielle joining us.
Jonathan, a former FBI agent, we'll get to that and much, much more as we continue.
It's the Sean Hannity Show.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
Director Comey, the FBI's reputation has taken a big hit over the last year.
Do you share any of the responsibility for that?
No.
The FBI's reputation has taken a big hit because the President of the United States, with his acolytes, has lied about it constantly.
And in the face of those lies, a whole lot of good people who watch your network believe that nonsense.
That's a tragedy.
That will be undone eventually, but that damage has nothing to do with me.
There's somewhere between five and ten, and maybe seven, it may be eight.
I don't remember.
And I think some of them, I know when I created some of them, they were classified, but I don't know how many of that group.
One of them is the classified one is obviously from when you told President Trump in Trump Tower about what was in that two-page annex about the Steele dossier, the summary of what was in the Steele dossier.
What would the other classified ones be about?
Well, I can't answer that if they're classified.
Oh, there you go.
Let's just flip and flop and flail like James Comey has.
It's amazing to me that, you know, knowing that this is basically a small baby appetizer of what's about to come and Comey's involvement in, yeah, a rigged investigation into Hillary, but more importantly, his role in premeditated fraud on a FISA court to obtain a warrant and a back door to spy on a presidential candidate because he saved the other candidate, he and his cohorts, when there was obvious crimes, one right after the other.
And, you know, look at what the IG reports here.
What he did, Michael Horowitz is saying in this report, he failed to live up to his responsibilities and that it's absolutely dangerous what he has done.
And by not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for over 35,000 current FBI employees and many thousands of others who similarly have access or knowledge of these events.
Now, we're also, by the way, following the story as it relates to his cohort, Andrew McCabe.
We expect, we have a couple of people now saying that they expect an announcement.
Comey friend, this guy, what's his name, Ben Witts, is saying that he expects McCabe to be indicted any day now.
And he's not the only one out there saying it.
The former acting attorney general Matt Whittaker has predicted McCabe's indictment here.
But the Inspector General's report, remember, this is very, very narrow.
This has to do with the documents, his interactions with President Trump, President-elect Trump, and he lies to President Trump, as we've been telling you in the Trump Tower meeting.
It's salacious, but it's unverified.
Now, that may come back to be very damning to himself because if the bulk of the information in the FISA application that he signed in October was unverified, but just salacious, and that's the information they presented to the court.
He is by admission.
And this is where I think Rudy Giuliani got it right.
By admission, saying that he committed perjury and a fraud, premeditated fraud on FISA court judges for the purpose of getting this warrant that allowed them to spy to the Trump campaign transition and then presidency.
You know, for all the talk about he thinks he's so vindicated today, he's delusional.
You know, it gives a laundry list.
I can go on and on.
He didn't seek authorization from the FBI as it is required before providing memos to his attorneys or giving it to his friend Richmond, who later became his attorney, to the reporters to leak the information.
He didn't seek FBI authorization as he should have followed.
They concluded in the report that Comey's retention handling and dissemination of certain memos violated the Department of FBI policies, FBI employment agreement.
Comey told the Office of Inspector General he didn't notify anybody at the FBI that he's going to share these memos.
Yeah, that would be leaking memos.
That's a problem.
And accordingly, and those memos never should have been with him anyway.
These are all issues that involve the proper handling of top secret classified materials.
And he didn't handle those things the right way.
And all I can say is, you know, for all the people, he's lying to the FBI, showed a lack of candor.
He purposely didn't tell the agents the truth about what he did with the memos.
Well, there are people up to this point that have been charged with all these things.
I can spend another hour going through all the things that the Inspector General, I've got, let's see, six solid pages of everything they claim he did wrong.
And many of them would be a violation of the law.
Now, do I think Giuliani is right by saying that, yeah, okay, he might beat the rap on the small stuff and the leaking and taking classified information home and giving it to people and sharing it with people, which is illegal and not telling the FBI and not seeking the permission of the FBI as he should have.
I just don't see how DOJ prosecutors can avoid now indicting him.
And this will be now the big report.
This is the one we're really waiting for.
And that is perjury, premeditated fraud on a FISA court.
You know, the leaking can be more unethical than illegal, as Giuliani said, but the lying about the steel dossier and verifying it or saying it's verified and it's unverifiable.
Well, that's fraud.
That's perjury.
That's premeditated fraud on a court.
And I don't know a single judge that would accept that type of behavior.
You know, this violates everything.
That is straight up perjury.
And as Giuliani pointed out, that Comey lied.
He straight out lied, just like he straight out lied to the president of the United States and then president-elect.
Now, he didn't know that the steel dossier was a phony piece of junk.
Well, that's not true.
He did know.
He was warned on numerous occasions.
So, what's his answer to that?
I don't see any legal loophole available to him when the Pfizer report comes out from the Inspector General.
Anyway, joining us now, Jonathan Gillum, former FBI agent himself, Danielle McLaughlin, attorney, constitutional expert.
I'll start with you, Danielle.
Great to have you back.
If I, Sean Hannity, if I am warned repeatedly by numerous people that something I'm putting in an application, which represents the bulk of the application to spy on an American citizen, deny that citizen their constitutional rights, that also would give him a backdoor into a campaign.
If I sign a warrant, I'm verifying everything in that warrant is true, when in fact, we now know on the other side of it that it was not only unverifiable, but the FBI themselves, when they finally got around to vetting the dirty dossier, they determined that 90 plus percent of it was not true.
That should have been done before they used it in their applications.
Is that true?
I mean, yes and no.
Yes, they make an application.
When they make the application, they verify and they make a sworn statement, of course, that everything in the application is true and correct.
There is a difference, though, in the fact that this was included in a broader application, and it was very clearly demarcated by a page long source.
Slow down.
That's not true.
Listen, let's go back to what we know now.
As of now, we know the bulk of information in the four FISA applications, the bulk of it, was the unverifiable dossier that Hillary paid for.
We don't know that because we know that.
No, we do know that because we have numerous congressional committees.
I'll quote them to you: the Nunes Committee, House Intel Committee, and then we have the Grassley-Graham memo.
And the Grassley-Graham memo used these words: that the bulk of information used in the FISA applications was the Clinton bought and paid for dirty Russian dossier.
We have not seen those Pfizer applications.
Okay, but they did.
They did.
And I don't think Grassley and Graham would go out there and lie to the American people, knowing that we're going to see them eventually.
So the bulk of information, we have numerous independent sources saying the bulk of that application was the bought and paid for Russian dossier that we now know is unverifiable.
But he went and presented it before the court and signed his name on it and verified that it's true.
He told the court it is all true.
Two things.
They were clear that it was not verified because it was an external source.
It was external intelligence, number one.
Number two, there were three Pfizer renewals that were granted on the basis of the intelligence that was gained on the first Pfizer.
You don't go back three times and get your Pfizer re-upped.
You don't get more collection of information unless you've shown that you have actionable intelligence from the first.
So the point here is he did not go out and verify it.
And as you say, I agree with you.
It was not entirely verifiable.
But the three final Pfizer applications, which meet different judges, by the way, they all showed that what they were collecting from Papadocoulos was useful intelligence.
There's original and there are three renewals.
You can just minimize it if the bulk of the application was the dirty dossier.
Those are the words.
Now, beyond the regulations, by the way, it also can be a felony if you conceal relevant information and deceive a FISA court.
A half dozen statutes make it a crime.
Hang on, make it a crime to perpetrate a fraud on the court, including the deprivation of rights, 18 U.S.C. 242, perjury, 18 U.S.C. 1621 and 23, and false statements, 18 U.S.C. 1001, and also several obstruction of justice applications would probably fit in this case as well.
And fraud statutes would be applicable here.
You know, all right, 800-941, Sean Tolfrey, telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program?
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
And as we continue with Jonathan Gillum and Danielle McLaughlin, who signed off on all four successive warrant applications?
Well, he signed at least three of them, but you got not only him, you've got Andrew McCabe, you've got Sally Yates, you've got Rod Rosenstein, Dana Buente.
They all signed these applications, Jonathan Gillum.
And the bulk of the information that presented to the court was nothing but a lie.
You know, listen, we can argue with Danielle or any of these other analysts that want to go over this stuff, Sean.
And Danielle, I hope you realize this.
I mean, the fact is all the stuff that you're saying, Sean, has been proven.
We know that this stuff has happened.
We can debate back and forth.
We don't, you know, maybe we don't have the information in front of us.
But here's the thing that everybody is missing in this whole thing.
Where, and I'm speaking, I just got off the phone with somebody that used to be in the bureau with me, and we were rattled at how this whole thing is unfolding.
And what case in the real world would ever be investigated like this?
You know, like, for instance, what is a report?
What are these reports that the DOJ keeps putting out?
I'll tell you exactly what those are.
It's been normalized when they investigate people in higher-up positions in the government, that they'll do it in a different way than they would if you were a lower-level person in the government or if you were a civilian.
There is no court case in the world, or at least in the United States, where they're going to investigate somebody like Comey.
They start to find out at the same time that somebody like McCabe and Strzok and Paige and all these other people were involved in the same things for the same reason.
And then they're going to look at one individual and clear him or not.
That's not the way investigations work.
And we don't release the information to the public while the case is unfolding.
And I'll tell you, Sean, this is the story.
This is the story that should be looked at now.
We already know the information is there.
You have done incredible reporting.
John Solomon, Greg Jarrett, all these people have come together and put this stuff out, and we know it's there.
But we have to ask the question, Danielle, you yourself as an attorney, what court case would ever be done like this?
Once we see that they have done criminal behavior, James Comey himself, obstruction, espionage, mishandling of classified information, leaking government.
Not a hand, conspiracy.
Listen, I'm telling you what I would be charged if it was me and five other people in the bureau at a lower level.
Conspiracy to overthrow the government.
These are things that we would be charged with.
Why aren't these people being charged?
Why aren't they being investigated?
Why aren't they arrested?
Because I can guarantee I'd be sitting in jail while this is going on.
You have to realize we have been convinced that this is the way it is, but this is not the way the government works or investigating the legal system works.
It's the way the government works.
Look, even Sean said it at the beginning, you know, at the top of our segment here.
The OIG, the Inspector General Horowitz, did not find, and DOJ declined to prosecute.
And Horowitz found that, yes, he broke his employment agreement.
And yes, he acted unethically.
And I totally agree as it relates to the program.
You're going down a road that is not what I'm talking about here.
What case would you ever be involved with where the legal system works like this for somebody other than a higher-up in the federal government?
It would never happen.
We would be in a court case right now, or they would be held while investigation was unfolding.
That's not happening, and there's nothing you can say to disprove that.
Listen, we already know.
We do have some insight into the big report that is coming.
We know, and our sources have confirmed numerous times now, that the Inspector General did, in fact, find all four Carter Page FISA warrants were illegally obtained.
All four.
Now, the people that signed off on them, they would then be guilty of perpetrating a fraud before the court.
This, you know, all this talk about, it's frustrating.
And I understand people like me that see this and I think, okay, well, Papadopoulos, he got in trouble for lying and Flynn got in trouble for lying and he didn't lie.
And I don't even think Papadopoulos lied either.
And I think there's going to be tapes that prove that.
And then you got Cohn and Manafort.
You can bring their cases in here.
And here we have numerous examples where they are swearing to the best of their ability as true professionals that it is what they're presenting to the court is verified.
Now, he signed that first warrant in October of 2016.
And he signed two other warrants, but he told then President-elect Trump that it was all unverified.
So it's either one or the other.
He's either lying to the president-elect or he lied on the FISA applications.
And based on what we now know about the dirty dossier and the FBI even confirming when they finally looked at it, they found pretty much none of it was true.
And that was used as the basis to obtain those warrants.
So that's where this is going.
And once it gets there, I do not see any out for James Comey at all.
And he can be as arrogant and ridiculously outspoken as he wants, but he should probably be keeping his mouth shut because I think the next one, when it comes out, is going to blow him out of the water because this one exposed enough of the improper procedures that he used.
And clearly he had an agenda against Donald Trump from the get-go.
That was clear.
All right, Jonathan Danielle, thank you.
We hope you have a safe, great, happy Labor Day.
When we come back on the other side, straight to the phones, I know a lot of you are angry and you have every right to be in my opinion.
That's next.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
All right, let's get to your calls here.
No, a lot of you are angry.
A lot of you want the same outcome that I do, which is equal justice applied under the law.
We have to have equal application of our laws, equal justice under the law.
And we can't have a two-tier justice system.
Now, we've known about this for a couple of weeks.
But for me, the more I read it and the more, you know, the long laundry list that I went through earlier, well, it doesn't smell right to me that Comey would get away what are clear violations of law, which we have covered in great detail here.
A devastating report.
And any way you look at it, his conduct is atrocious.
It's clear he had an agenda.
The agenda was hate Donald Trump.
You know, I've been told from sources now that we're going to actually find out.
Look at how they treated Trump, but Hillary Clinton, well, connections with Russia and her campaign, they were given a heads up on.
You know, why didn't Jim Comey at any point say, listen, let me explain, you know, as an FBI director and being a part of the Department of Justice, what that means?
I know you haven't worked in government before, but this is what's important.
Why didn't they go and say, well, we were concerned that some people might have ties to Russia and they're trying to reach out to your campaign and we want you to help us as an American citizen because that's not what the plan was as evidenced by the struck page, you know, texting that went back and forth.
Oh, God, please, he should lose 100 million to zero.
And the same people that rigged Hillary Clinton's investigation, a slam dunk case of Hillary Clinton.
All right, let's get to our phones as we say hi to Rhett.
He's in South Carolina.
Rhett, how are you?
Glad you called.
I'm doing great.
How are you?
I'm good.
Listen, Sean, nobody's going to jail.
We've watched this thing for years now, and they're just not going.
And you mentioned angry.
Angry is probably really not the word, but the fix is in.
I don't know exactly how it's in, but none of these guys are going to jail.
I don't believe that.
Look, if it comes out that way, I'll be shocked and I'll be more than shocked.
I'll be concerned because that means that we can shred the Constitution.
That's what it really means, that the Constitution, which is the foundation for our rule of law, we might as well just shred it because it's meaningless, because laws then will only be applied to the rest of us, not those in power.
If you're well enough connected, that you're saying then, because we have clear violations of laws all over the place here.
I went through a number of them earlier in the program.
I'll go over them again.
I mean, you can start with, for example, with James Comey about Justice Department regulations.
You know, they have the same requirements relying on, you know, the unverified.
And this will be the big Horowitz report that we're really waiting for.
A clear violation of laws.
But beyond that, it's a felony if you conceal relevant information and deceive the FISA court.
This is where it's all headed.
You have a half dozen statutes that make it a crime to perpetrate a fraud on a court, including deprivation of rights, 18 USC 242, perjury, 18 USC 162123, false statements, 18 USC 1001.
I mean, Papadopoulos and Cohn and Manafort and Flynn, they're all in trouble for not telling the truth.
Well, we know Comey didn't tell the truth.
You have several obstruction of justice statutes as well that would be applicable.
You know, when you sign off on four FISA warrants with unverifiable information, that's what you're doing.
And in the history of the country, I've never seen anything like it.
I mean, look, the referrals here are devastating.
The laundry list that I went through earlier in the program, it is all real.
And we now know we have enough sources that we can confirm the DOJ Inspector General has found that all four FISA applications were illegally obtained.
The warrants were illegal obtained.
When that report is next, we expect that one next.
If there is no follow-up, no indictments, then, you know, kiss the American system of justice goodbye, in my opinion.
Thank you.
Anyway, back to our phones.
Let's say hi to Will is in Florida.
Will, hey, how are you?
Glad you called.
Sean, how are you doing?
Good.
How are you?
I just want to talk.
Great, great.
Hey, I just want to talk about the 2020 election.
And I mean, you mentioned the hypocrisy of the left.
It seems like the liberal elites and the alt left are using this as a jumping point for their platform and doubling down on calling Americans, everyday normal average Americans, racist, sexist, bigots.
And it didn't work in 2016.
It just seems like the Democrats don't have a platform for 2020.
They're doubling down on the rhetoric.
If you disagree with a $73 trillion new Green Deal plan, if you disagree with free health care, free education, free money to illegal immigrants, then you're racist.
You're a sexist.
You're a bigot.
You're insert whatever term here.
Is this a way to win an election?
Well, I mean, it's worked in the past.
If you want some historical context, I think, you know, one of the reasons I always remind people of all these past elections is because I want people to know that this is the tactics that they use.
You know, Mark was pretty effective, the gray one last night on TV when he pulled out, oh, Barry Goldwater is crazy, which now they're trying to pull out and use that too against Donald Trump.
It is just, look, if people want power, they'll say and do anything to get the power.
One of the problems, America now is at a tipping point because we now have freedom and liberty and capitalism, the greatest wealth creating system ever devised by man.
We now have that system hanging in the balance because of people that literally would take the lifeblood of our economy and just remove it based on their phony interpretation of science, which would make us the least competitive world economically, country, economically in the world.
Look, and it gets worse than that.
It would result in the lowest standard of living we've ever had since the beginning of this country.
And yet we have what is like a gold rush that every American can benefit from in terms of our natural resources, gas, oil, coal.
And if we become the big net exporter of the lifeblood of everybody else's economy, the standard of living of every American, that then becomes a reality of wealth creation that we've never dreamed of.
You know, you think of all these Middle Eastern countries and all the billions and billions and billions of dollars they've got, but they don't share a lot of it with the people in the country.
That's sad.
Venezuela is another case in point.
But if these resources were shared with the American people, I mean, there's no telling how wealthy every American could be.
We could reverse the tragedy of violence in our cities.
We can reverse the tragedy of education in our poorly performing schools.
We could reverse the tragedy of all sorts of problems around the country.
Anyway, glad you called 800-941-Sean.
Our number, Missy, West Virginia.
Missy, how are you?
Glad you called.
I'm doing very well.
How are you?
Very well.
Thank you.
I understand that we are not privy to everything that's going on right now, but once again, it looks like he's getting off where it was proven that he did something wrong.
And again, those rules don't apply to certain people, but yet they apply to everybody else.
That's what it looks like.
And you know why?
Because that's what it is.
It's not in dispute anymore.
We even have Rod Rosenstein explaining the FISA warrant and what a career law enforcement has to do to get the Pfizer warrant.
And if you get it wrong, there are consequences.
Okay, they got it wrong.
Now, that's the next phase in this.
This was the baby report.
I got it.
But still, here you have a guy that we all know lied.
Here you have a guy that lied on numerous occasions.
Here you have a guy that is beyond unethical in so many different ways as we as we go through point after point.
He just decided to do it all his way to hell.
Well, it didn't matter what the law said about keeping confidential memos.
Didn't matter what FBI policy was.
It didn't matter that he needed FBI authorization.
None of that mattered.
It didn't matter what the mishandling of such would mean.
The employment agreement that he signed on to, you know, he tells nobody, leaks all of this information for his own political agenda.
And he's, you know, caught lying left and right.
And if I lied like James Comey, I guarantee you I would get arrested.
Now, we've had a number of people that had, that this just happened to.
Now, I think something is going on in terms of how they are approaching all of this.
This is what I'm getting at here.
I think what is happening here is beyond being grossly inappropriate.
And I think that probably the decision is being made for this reason.
And this is what my sources also tell me, that this is not the case, the first case that the Attorney General wants to bring into this abuse of power corruption scandal.
Now, a lot of it has to do with, for example, this standard of a reasonable doubt and prosecuting people for violating internal policies.
I think if you're a Republican, you're going to get that standard.
If you're Donald Trump or related to Donald Trump, you're definitely getting that standard.
He took these documents classified.
That's against the law.
And then he lied about it.
You know, lacking candor is the same as lying.
And I think if this next report comes out on FISA abuse, which James Comey is going to be all over, now that we've established in this report that he's not Mr. Super Patriot and not Mr. Super Honesty either, I think if at that point nothing is done, I think the American people rightly will see this for what it is.
And that is that this is the swamp protecting the swamp.
So that would be the only way to characterize it at that point.
Now, the report in that sense is limited to the memos.
The big report is coming.
We've known about this for two and a half weeks.
Now, it's funny because I've been telling people this, and I've told people what the results of this is.
And now that people are beginning to see it for themselves, they're beginning to say, not only our reporting was 100% accurate, but also the results of our reporting.
We predicted perfectly that this was not going to be the one that led to indictments.
And I don't have any insight.
I just know the following.
I know the inspector general has found the FISA application warrants that they obtained were in fact fraudulent.
All four of them were illegally obtained.
That's the next phase.
And if they don't act on that and they don't hold people accountable there, then that means you forget it.
The day is done.
There will be no equal justice under the law under those circumstances.
It's the only conclusion you can make.
Thank you, Missy.
Let's go to Art is in Chicago.
Art, how are you?
Glad you called.
Great, Hannity.
This seems like it's the IG report as a resume for Comey to get a job at CNN.
I'm on my last nerve with this.
I want to see people locked up.
Listen, I believe in my heart, and it's funny because you know we've created this ensemble team.
We also reported to you exactly what this phase one would be.
And I told you at the time, and I stand by this today, probably the lowest hanging fruit, least in terms of importance, if you're going to weigh it on balance in terms of criminality.
It seems to me I would have done this.
The order of this would have been very different for me.
I would have brought the FISA abuse.
I would have put them all together.
I don't know why the need to separate this portion out separate and apart from FISA abuse.
Maybe it's because they don't want when the FISA report comes out and they do conclude, in fact, that the warrants were obtained illegally, when that happens, they can say, well, we gave every consideration the last time.
We can't give those considerations this time.
And at that point, I think Mayor Giuliani is right in his observations that, you know, there is no way out of signing a fraudulent document, especially when you were warned on multiple occasions.
And you can't say, well, he gave us good information in the past because that's not the standard.
You're supposed to verify that it is accurate and true what you present to judges.
There's not an American citizen listening to my voice today that could ever make that claim ever.
We have so much more about all of this tonight on Hannity 9 Eastern on Fox.
So were all of your memos that you recorded on classified or other documents, memos that might be yours as a private citizen?
I'm sorry, I'm not following the question.
Well, I think you said you'd use classified, classified, okay, not the classified documents, unclassified.
I don't have any of them anymore if I gave them to the special counsel.
But yeah, my view was that the content of those unclassified memorialization, those conversations was my recollection recorded.
Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says that there are seven memos.
He says four of them are classified.
Is that right?
I don't know because I don't have the memos.
I don't know exactly how many there are.
Some may be memos, some may be emails.
There's somewhere between five and ten.
It may be seven.
It may be eight.
I don't remember.
And I think some of them, I know when I created some of them, they were classified.
President's tweeted innumerable times calling you a leaker.
Well, what's your response to President Trump?
Look, it's true.
I mean, I'm the one who testified about it.
That's how people know about it.
I gave that unclassified memo to my friend and asked him to give it to a reporter.
That is entirely appropriate.
So if you're releasing memos, which may later on be classified, which happened to Hillary Clinton as well, aren't you taking a risk that you think you know, oh, this is not going to be classified, but it turns out one of them was retroactive?
I don't think if it is a risk, you're making an educated judgment based on your training and your experience as to what's classified and what's not.
But you did leak, you did leak memos.
I mean, is it okay for somebody at the FBI to leak something, an internal document, even if it's not classified?
Isn't that leaking?
Well, there's a whole lot wrong with your question, Anderson.
First, I didn't leak memos.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
All right, the narrow in scope, limited to memos, Inspector General report, devastating in many ways to Comey, but it is a preview of coming attractions.
We've got every aspect, every angle covered, and we will have it tonight on Hannity, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We have John Solomon, we have Finton, we have Greg Jarrett, Joe DeGenova, Victoria, we have Congressman Meadows, Nunes, Ratcliffe, Andy McCarthy, and so much more.
Nine Eastern, Hannity, on the Fox News channel.
News you won't get anywhere else.
See you tonight at nine.
Back here tomorrow.
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